BioMarin Pharmaceutical is shaking up its leadership team, raiding Amgen for an R&D chief to replace a departing company veteran and pulling off the coup of signing a high-profile former Roche dealmaker.
The two people joining the company are Greg Friberg, M.D., and James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D. Friberg will take the title of chief research and development officer when he joins BioMarin at the end of September. The incoming executive spent 18 years at Amgen, rising to the position of vice president, global medical affairs, rare disease, but is now making the trip up the California coast to BioMarin.
Friberg is joining BioMarin to replace Hank Fuchs, M.D., who is retiring after 15 years at the company. Fuchs will stick around in an advisory capacity until March but his long spell at BioMarin, which began in 2009 in the chief medical officer role, is now nearing the end.
Sabry is set to join BioMarin as chief business officer on Oct. 7. The executive re-entered the job market after deciding to leave Roche in May. Roche said Sabry was retiring after a 14-year spell, which began as head of Genentech partnering, but the veteran dealmaker has quickly found a new employer.
The appointment comes after BioMarin dropped a series of hints that its strategic and operating review committee’s consideration of capital allocation is set to shift its approach to external innovation. Starting on the first-quarter earnings call in April, BioMarin executives have repeatedly flagged a Sept. 4 investor day as the moment they will share more information on their approach to matters including dealmaking.
Talking in April, BioMarin CEO Alexander Hardy said in the past external innovation has been successful for the biotech “from an early research standpoint.” However, with the business growing and looking to secure sustained, long-term growth, Hardy and his colleagues have been reassessing the strategy.
“We now see that there's an opportunity by dialing in on assets that could augment our existing portfolio that leverage our distinctiveness, i.e., what we know and we know we do well, better than others, that we should be more open to those sorts of opportunities,” Hardy said at the time.
Hardy stressed that BioMarin’s guidance as of April didn’t reflect any incremental deal activity. But while the CEO said the biotech had “no plans right now to transact major BD,” he conceded that the team did “see a growing role for this in the future.”
Sabry is set to join BioMarin one month after the investor day at which the company has promised to share more information about its approach to business development. The timing suggests BioMarin will enter a new dealmaking phase with a well-connected business development veteran at the head of the unit.
Brinda Balakrishnan, M.D., Ph.D., has overseen business development at BioMarin until now, bringing in more than 20 assets—and finding buyers for other programs—during her more than eight years at the biotech. BioMarin said Balakrishnan, its chief corporate strategy and business development officer, has decided to leave the company, effective Oct. 1.